In bottle filling plants and transport means for bottles, measures need to be taken to separate flawed and/or damaged bottles from a continuous conveyed stream. A variety of systems for removing flawed bottles from a continuous stream of bottles are known. They use pushing means, so-called “pushers”, which push the flawed bottles in a lateral direction out of the stream of bottles. These pushers are normally operated with compressed air, which has the unwanted effect that, if there is a change in the bottles transported in the system, the operating pressure has to be adjusted for the new type of bottle; the position with respect to the conveyor belt also has to be corrected manually.
This concept has been known for a long time and is considered prior art. However, it is disadvantageous in that it strongly limits the modulation capability and the controllability of these pneumatic pushing means. The control parameters and/or the trigger times and/or the position of the pusher must be manually adjusted to any changed circumstances, such as different bottle sizes and/or fill levels of the transported bottles.